Wednesday, September 29, 2010

A Letter to the Deer Who Ate My Potato Vines

Two days ago, I had the most beautiful flowers blooming in my yard. This was no simple feat. I did not inherit my mother's green thumb. It is a struggle for me to keep living things alive (at least of the plant variety).

Summer is hanging on in our part of the world and last night, I went out to give my pots an extra dose of water. Imagine my surprise to find 1/2 of them missing. They were nowhere to be found!

I am kind to the deer in the winter when they come down from the hills and rip the bark off my trees. I know that they are hungry. I even forgive them in the spring when they decimate my yard of all the tender blooms trying to poke their heads out of the earth after a long, hard winter. But this is NOT ACCEPTABLE deer. The potato vines were NOT meant to be eaten. They are there for adornment. Next time, I will not ignore the frenzied barks of our dog as he tries to warn us of your intentions. I have your number deer!

1 comment:

PaperQuilter (aka Liz)
said...

Oh how I can empathize! The deer here "prune" the flowering shrubs, pull whole plants right out of the planters, eat others down to the soil, and generally make it very challenging to ever have a display of blooms unless in a hanging pot -- hanging pretty high at that! And what the deer don't get, the squirrels do. This year I gave in and put artificial flowers in the barrels down at the foot of the driveway -- I'm tired of feeding the deer with expensive bedding plants! My sister has had some luck putting tufts of her dog's hair among the plants, worth a try!